Monday, December 12, 2011
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Blog Post # 14
Jose Picardo's Long List of Resources For Teachers
Wow that just blew my mind. I can't believe all of the different things that are out there. I'm not sure why because I realize there is a bunch of helpful tools out there, but when they are brought to light and are able to see what they can be applied to it is pretty amazing. The tool "Gliffy" I thought would be great for work if you have to do presentations. Icing on the cake always helps out. I thought "Mahara" was one that would be ideal for a class forum such as EDM310. I liked that everything is right there for your students to get set up. Really convenient. I also liked "Survey Monkey" because I remember when I was in high school a math teacher I had always liked us to do surveys because we could compare a lot of different stats. I like doing surveys but all we had was a notepad and pen. This would have been a little more professional and would have peaked my interest a lot more in what I was doing. That list had so many other good programs that I would have to do a full on report to express the valuableness of all the tools listed. This just shows me that the wealth of support to teachers out there is truly great. If every teacher invested as much time in providing these type of quality resources to their students they would be magnifying the amount of potential and production in the class room. Great stuff for your own personal use as well.
Top 10 Tips
The top three tips that Jose Picardo gave, in my eyes and not in any particular order, is using pod casts, using blogs, and using teleconference tools such as Skype. Blogs are a good way to lay out plans for the students and having them figuring out how to navigate throughout them. They are also a good place for your students to interact within the class by providing projects and their personal thoughts in a social class forum. Blogs are also good for publishing pod casts on that can be used as such a great tool to disperse information from student to class as well as teacher to student. For example, if a student is sick they can get on the class blog and look up a pod cast with the days assignments, what happened that day, and what will be going on the next day. It reduces parents having to take time out of their day to go in and pick up any assignments because it is available on the internet. The last of my three is using Skype for communication purposes. I've just now this semester started using it for my own personal use and I think it's great. You can extend your horizons of communication with outside classrooms. I really like the concept of this because social media can be so impersonal now. With this tool students can actually see facial expressions of whoever they are talking to.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Blog Post #13
My Teacher is An App
The article starts off talking describing how this kid that is enrolled in online school navigates his day of learning outside of a traditional school learning. The article gives examples of different states utilizing online learning services for various reasons. One advantage of online schooling that was expressed in one account was that it allows the individual to excel in more advanced levels then that in a classroom of 20 some students where they all are taught the same material at the same pace at the same time. Another advantage is statistics have shown that tax dollars that go toward traditional schools can be cut in half using online services because it cuts out salaries and other materials that contribute to budget problems that are currently at hand. Standardized testing results have shown to go down with students that are in online schools. Another concern that goes along with that is that students miss out on social interaction skills that they would gain by going to a school with other kids.
My biggest thing that I thought of after reading this article is why can't anyone make a compromise between two things for the better good? Obviously there is some good that comes from online classes. It offers kids with gifted abilities in areas to excel to a higher level and it allows teachers to be able to concentrate with the students instead of grading and lesson plans because the program already takes care of those things for them. I think it's also important that kids get the social interaction with other kids for developing social skills for their professional future. I just don't think you can completely eliminate public school systems and the teachers that are in there. I'm not looking at it strictly from an educational standpoint either but from an economical one as well. If you take jobs away to help out with a budget then you are not solving a problem but essentially disguising it in a different form. You have to be willing to implement a hybrid style of program in order to move ahead. If we can do it with cars then we can do it with education.
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